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You could be forgiven for thinking that the
very spirit
of old England has been distilled into a diamond shaped
island set in a sparkling sea. No more than five miles off
the southern coast of England it gets the best of the
weather, a fact that didn’t escape the Romans - there are
ruins of five Roman villas on the island. When the
Romans left the Isle of Vectis became a Jutish kingdom
under the rule of the marvellously named King Stuf and
a Saxon Kingdom under first the King of Mercia and
later the King of Wessex. It was the last part of England
to convert to Christianity. Always vulnerable the little
Isle has been invaded by the Vikings, the Normans and
later the Spanish. Henry VIII fortified the island when
he built his Royal Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth.
During the English Civil War, Charles I got lost in the
New Forest, missed the Jersey boat and ended up on the
Isle of Wight and imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle.
Queen Victoria, like the Romans 2000 years earlier, came
for the lovely weather. Prince Albert designed their
impressive holiday home Osborne House in the style of
an Italian Renaissance palazzo, a style that was later
adopted by water boards up and down the country! The
Diamond Isle
became a fashionable Victorian holiday
resort with Tennyson and Dickens among the enthusiasts.
Sheila Hancock, Robert Hooke and Jeremy Irons were
born on the Island where red squirrels still rule (there are
no grey squirrels), David Icke has a house there (but
probably lives on the moon these days) and fittingly for
the
Garden Isle
Alan Titchmarsh was once High Sheriff.
JB Priestley summed up the Isle of Wight best when he
said that '
one might take one glance at the Island
as something on a map and then decide to give it a
couple of hours. But you can spend days and days
exploring the Isle of Wight, which if you are really
interested, begins magically enlarging itself for you'.
With its mild climate and refreshing sea air the Isle of
Wight is an ideal day out - as we take the short voyage
across the Solent to Fishbourne you’ll catch glimpses
Victoria’s Diamond - The Isle of Wight